Tales of the Aggronaut

Zombies Calm Me

March 18, 2020 by Belghast

The first day of going on remote protocol was interesting. For the most part the entire day was spent with triage of why various members of the team could not get connected remotely to specific resources. I did however manage to make it through the entire day without finding something I had to drive in for, so I guess that is working as intended? It very much is like raid leadership, but if your raid is acting independently of each other and that you are having to talk to them in tells. The two stand up meetings more or less worked as intended and I limited them just to critical issues. The first one unfortunately was pushed back due to a mandatory meeting, but we managed to get started just fine an hour later than originally planned.

The thing that I am noticing is that while working remotely I tend to put in more hours overall. I tagged in and did my first “work” about 6:30 in the morning and I tagged out for the night around 5 pm, and also ate lunch at the keyboard. So maybe I need to work on setting up a bit of time boxing and only making myself available during my normal 7:30 am to 4:30 pm window. Were it not rainy as hell I would have probably gone out into the backyard to eat lunch just to get a bit of a change of scenery. I have Shin Ramen for days and I wound up eating a cup of that for lunch much like I would have were I sitting in the office. In theory I might partake of Doordash and start ordering in lunch for my wife and I. Yesterday the Tulsa metro escalated its protocols and all restaurants and bars that do not have a delivery or carry out service are closed. As a result we are going to try and order take out from as many small establishments as possible over the next few days to try and keep them in business.

As far as gaming goes when I went downstairs and fixed dinner I eventually settled in and tried to play some more Diablo 3. Firstly I do not really love the Natalya’s set build, but it is functional and I can do Torment 1 pretty easily with only having my 4 piece and none of the other important items needed. My biggest problem still is the fact that I am gold locked in that I need roughly a million gold per attempt to keep trying to socket a weapon so that I can get my 6 piece set and finally start the season properly. The challenge there is that I am just not making that much gold per run and it feels like I am in a super grindy place. I need to catch up with Grace so we can use the Puzzle Ring and I can at least get my Boon of the Hoarder gem.

On a whim I opted to fire up my Playstation 4 remotely and start playing Last of Us. Yes I know I should be branded as a pariah for making it this far into my gaming career without having played this game. I have to admit part of this is spurred on by the fact that there is an HBO series in the work and another part by the fact that the second part should be releasing soon. So far I am really digging it, but I also don’t love aiming guns with a controller so we will see how long this lasts. I would have so much rather played this with a mouse and keyboard and on some level I kept hoping that like Horizon Zero Dawn it would also eventually release on the PC.

I didn’t make it terribly far into the game but I have to say that even on a baseline PS4 it looks gorgeous. I will likely play some more tonight as weirdly games and fiction about post apocalyptic settings calm me when the world is falling apart around my shoulders. I guess it is a way of showing me that “it could be worse”, and really for me it could be very worse. You know when you are wandering around in Silent Hill during the day time and everything feels wrong… but at the same time nothing is really dangerous? That is how living in pandemia feels right now because for the most part things are close to normal… but not quite. I am still hoping we all make it out safely on the other side of this mess. I am a prime candidate for having a bad time of it due to my health problems so I feel like I keep needing to tell everyone around them that I love them just in case things go badly at some point in the future.

Professional Cat Herding

March 17, 2020 by Belghast

I don’t have a pithy image to go with this post, but yesterday we officially went on remote protocols. Like literally everyone out there I am dealing with life in pandemia, where social distancing… that thing the introverts and anxiety ridden among us have been practicing our entire life. I am officially sitting in my work place and yes I am wearing pants. Well that is a slight lie because I opted for shorts instead of my usual jeans, but I am properly dressed. I attempted to maintain as much of my morning routine as possible as I got up, showered, left the house, picked up breakfast and then instead of driving to the office I drove back home. What makes it doubly odd is that both my wife and I are now remote workers for the time being, though currently she is on spring break.

I had the sudden realization yesterday that managing a team of 16 remote employees is going to be an awful lot like leading a raid group. The challenge of leading a raid is that you effectively have a group of unpaid volunteers that you somehow are trying to get working towards the same goal with nothing but text and voice chat in order to wrangle them. When it comes to actual employees at least there are some financial hooks that you have that you can flex, but otherwise I think remote work is going to feel extremely similar. While we swapped Discord and Ventrilo for more professional tools like Microsoft Teams… the theory is very similar.

While sitting down to write this I am already connected in with my team and answering some initial tech support questions as we attempt to make sure everyone can get into their machines as intended. Kenzie is extremely confused because she knows that I should be leaving my office any minute now and continues to pace around as if to remind me that I have to run out the door. Hopefully at some point she will settle in on her box beside me and chill. The thing that concerns me the most is that it is only 7:10 and I already feel pretty isolated. I have a feeling that we are going to have to keep a chat going or something in the background that folks can drop in and out of just to have some human contact, which is bizarre for me to admit considering that I can go hours without saying a word on most days.

I pitched this concept as a grand new adventure to my employees. We come from a very “butts in seats” culture where if you are not in your seat at a specific time then you must not be actually working. One of the biggest complaints that I have heard over the years is that we don’t really have a good remote work option, and as a result this is now our chance to prove that things can in fact get done when we are all in different locations. So my hope is that we can embrace this opportunity and show that productivity comes in a bunch of different packages. This is either going to go amazingly well or backfire horribly, but I believe it is going to be the former rather than the later. Just the fact that I can work from cocoon like darkness of my office is a major upgrade to the harsh brightness of the fluorescent light sea of cubical.

Some parting thoughts however. I did some research going into this situation and one of the things that I found helpful is a pamphlet that community veteran Sanya Weathers created with some of her tips and tricks from a career of working remotely. She is currently selling it on Amazon Kindle for a little under $3 and then planning on donating the proceeds to her local food pantry. I ended up taking this version, converting it to PDF and then sending it out to my employees and putting in a donation through her coffee link for each of them and a few more just in case it spread within the company. I found the advice to be invaluable and the writing style was easily approachable and as such I am hoping it helps my crew in making the adjustment.

The thing is… at this point none of us know how long this is going to go on. It is wrecking the daily routine and as a result we are going to have to find a brand new one. I also fully expect that this blog is going to shift around a bit as a result given that my gaming patterns are being interrupted as well. Yesterday was so draining that I more or less melted into the sofa when I got home and did the whole dozing in and out of sleep thing until we finally decided to go to the bedroom around 9 pm. I maybe knocked out a few quests in Elder Scrolls Online, but my appetite for gaming was minimal just due to the sheer exhaustion of existing in pandemia. We are in the time of community spread and I hope we all make it out okay on the other end. I am going to continue to talk about the things that concern me but I am likely not going to be promoting posts like this one. This one is only for the folks who read me on a daily basis.

Tres Cazadora

March 16, 2020 by Belghast

This weekend was the beginning of another Diablo 3 season and once again we are on our bullshit. I was super happy to see that Byx was around and wanting to do nonsense and since we are all sorta stressed to the highest degree we seemingly all chose the easy mode. Demon Hunter is pretty much the default state for me and a Diablo season because I know with a little push I can get in and get the content knocked out in relatively short order. I decided to rebirth an older Demon Hunter which lead to the above state of our party, where we are all desperately in need of clothing and kicking demon butt in high heels.

This was a fairly low gaming weekend, because we spent a lot of our time doing various cleaning activities both for the sake of covid19 and for the fact that it is spring break and we always seem to do big cleaning projects. We went out shopping for awhile on Saturday and managed to get a new pair of outdoor rugs for the backyard, so pending things ever warm up again we will get everything set up back there again. This is mostly for our own mental fortitude because if we are sequestered for very long in the near future we will want access to our peaceful oasis with birbs, squirrels and neighborhood cats. Huge thanks to my friend Kolrath for giving me a lift from 55ish to 70 on Saturday morning fairly early, and Grace and I finally managed to catch up with each other on Sunday night to hang for a bit again.

I am currently stalled out on the seasonal journey and my six piece gear set by a single thing. I cannot for the life of me get a weapon to roll a socket. I’ve completely bankrupted myself on five or six occasions trying to roll a socket on a yellow bow and it just isn’t happening. Ultimately my game time has been spent farming gold and then blowing all of it on a futile attempt to get through chapter four. The worst part is that I don’t even love the gear set that is for this season, but I have been rat-holing other set pieces I come across because I think ultimately for farming purposes I am going to want a Yang’s Multishot build, which is probably my favorite? I am not sure what sort of shenanigans I can get up to this season with the ability to have odd combinations of cube items but I figure bolas and grenades are on the menu for nonsense.

The other thing that I did this weekend was spend the podcast getting reacquainted with Elder Scrolls Online. Effectively patching up right now will replace your current client with a brand new one, and while this is in itself a cumbersome and lengthy process… the end result is amazing. Elder Scrolls Online has always had significant performance issues, namely when it comes to loading into the game initially and loading into new areas. This client seems to completely fix these issues for me at least and has greatly improved general performance across the board. As always I am several content releases behind and am now working my way through the Morrowind content drop. I have no clue where I picked up the bad-ass Khajiit mask but I am absolutely rocking this cat lord vibe right now.

AggroChat #291 – Life in Pandemia

March 15, 2020 by Belghast

Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra and Thalen

This evening we thought we would start the show with a discussion of what life has been like for each of us in the time of Covid19. We’ve all sorta been juggling trying to maintain a relatively normal life while still remaining safe and sound. As part of this discussion we talk about the various things getting cancelled, like E3 and wondering if this is the end of that show as a whole. Kodra and Ash talk about their adventures in Ori and the Will of the Wisps and how maybe it is on par with Hollow Knight. Bel talks a bit about his problem with Destiny Seasons and how expiring content keeps him from wanting to engage. Kodra discusses his recent journey into Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Dicey Dungeons. Finally Bel talks about how he has reached an end with his sojourn into Spiders games with Bound by Flame being the one that he just can’t bring himself to play.